In these days of global crisis, thoughtful seekers increasingly turn to Native Americans for healing wisdom. The Sacred Pipe is the medicine, says Jay Cleve in this informative and practical guide to a key practice of Native American spirituality. The Hopi and other ancient cultures predicted our present age as one of transition into a New World. The galactic alignment ending the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 occurs only every 26,000 years and is thought to be a critical time for raising consciousness to align with the radical expansion of Earth energies. Cleve shows how the Pipe can facilitate transformation on both the personal and planetary levels. He explains its use in rituals such as the sweat lodge, the vision quest, and the sun dance and in relation to the Medicine Wheel. He also provides practical information on obtaining and caring for a Pipe and on preparing for and performing the Pipe ceremony.

EXCERPT

Chapter 4: Native American Spiritual Philosophy

Native American Cosmology

In order to understand Native American spirituality, it is necessary to know how Natives perceive and conceptualize the cosmos.

The spiritual world is a world to which the seeker comes slowly—first with the faith of a child then with the patience and dedication of a sage. It requires one to let go of all beliefs, all prejudices, and all need for scientific methods of verification.

One must abandon logical thinking and learn to deal in the abstract, learn to accept that each moment is an eternity and that each entity becomes, at once, a physical and spiritual teacher.

Consciousness and Our Cosmic Origins

The path of consciousness for humans is an unfolding of embodied spirit. If we think of consciousness as something we participate in rather than something we have, our whole perspective shift s; we see the spiritual nature of ourselves and everything in the cosmos. Consciousness expresses itself and is embodied in the web of life and the complexity of all of its manifestations. Each manifestation—stones, bears, birds, trees, humans—carries the light of its cosmic origin, the potential within the Mind of the Great Mystery. Awakening to Spirit’s presence through our moment-to-moment opportunities for connection within the web gives impetus and direction to our homeward yearnings—as we follow our path toward self-knowing.

According to some Native teachers, the individual soul is created as an extension of the Great Spirit and is a reflection of the Creator’s consciousness.

The soul is light, which evolves and matures into the likeness of the Creator.

The ancient ritual of the Sacred Pipe requires a specific cosmological understanding—view of the cosmos—that continues into the present time. We can gain an understanding of the underlying cosmology of Native peoples by understanding the Medicine Wheel and analyzing the movements of the Sacred Pipe ritual.

Native Americans' Personal Experience of the Cosmos

Since it flows directly from personal experience, Native spirituality is open to continual revelation from Spirit. Hence, Native theology is flexible and able to respond rapidly to changing circumstances without altering its fundamental characteristics. Revelation takes place during a person’s lucid dreams, visions, and prophetic experiences, through rituals like the Sacred Pipe, sweat lodge, vision quest, or sun dance. And since continuing revelation takes place within a mythic and ritual context, it maintains rather than disrupts spiritual continuity.

The classical dwelling of Plains people is the portable, conical teepee, which expresses cosmological and metaphysical meanings. The teepee, sweat lodge, dream lodge, and sun dance circle are understood as the universe or, microcosmically, as a human being. The central fire of the teepee is the presence of the Great Mysterious, which is at the center of all existence; the smoke hole at its peak is the place and path of liberation. At the sun dance, the large, circular open-frame lodge is ritually constructed in imitation of the world’s creation, with the sacred cottonwood at the center as the axis linking Sky and Earth. Dancers move from the circumference to the tree at the center and back, always facing and concentrating upon the tree at the center. So the dancers are always gazing toward the sun, which is associated with the source of life.

The concept of the vertical axis explains the sacredness of the number seven, consistent with other world religions. In adding the vertical dimensions of Sky and Earth to the four horizontal ones of space, we have six dimensions, with the seventh as the point at the center where all the directions meet and where the person or people gather.

To realize this symbol in its fullness we must conceive of three horizontal circles inscribed with crosses, all three pierced by the vertical axis of humanity itself. The human being is the intermediary between Sky and Earth, linking the two, with feet on the ground and the head at the center of the firmament. The middle disk, like the vertical axis, represents humanity; for in joining Sky and Earth, it is neither pure spirit nor gross matter, but a synthesis of both. The Crow tribes often paint three rings around the cottonwood tree at the center of the sun dance lodge—the circles representing the three “worlds” they believe constitute human beings: body, soul, and spirit.

Cycling of Time

Historically, linear concepts of time are of relatively recent origin. They emerged with certain Judaic perspectives but didn’t become pervasive in the Western world until the beginning of the European Renaissance.

They then intensified with the rapidly changing ideologies of the Reformation.

But when we are oriented toward both past and future, we are distracted from the human and spiritual possibilities inherent in the fullness of our being in the now . Living in the moment allows us to be in immediate and continuing relationships with the qualities and forces of our natural environment.

Implicit in the Western mind’s notion of time is that “process” is now identified with “progress,” moving onward and upward—mostly upward.

But the process of change inherent in nature is cyclical and not linear. In the primordial tradition, people celebrate the grand mysteries of the cosmos through seasonal , thus cyclical , rites and ceremonies—supported by rich and varied forms of art, architecture, music, and drama.

Seeing life as a process opens it up to being immediately observed and experienced in all the forms, beings, forces, and changes of nature.

At the center of all change, as at the center of all phenomena, is the indwelling Presence of ultimate Mystery. And at that center, we partake of and are surrounded by the Totality of All That Is.

All the forms and beings of nature are held as sacred and thus treated with respect. The Native Americans’ reverence for nature and for life is central to their spirituality. The rhythm of the cycles of the cosmos, the sun, and the seasons repeats the cycle of human life as it moves from birth to death and to rebirth.

But change can have neither meaning nor purpose unless it is in relation to the changeless, which is at the center of every circle or cycle. The world of appearances has neither reality nor message for the realization of the fullness of our humanity unless it is understood in relation to the Absolute.

If animistic beliefs—consciousness and even sacredness in nonhumans— are understood as being ultimately attached to a universal Principle, then we realize that the mysteries of the creative process are witnessed through every form and force of nature and immediately experienced in the now.

Power of Place

Native American experiences of place are infused with mythic themes that express events of sacred time, which are as real now as at any other time. They are experienced through landmarks in each person’s immediate natural environment. The events of animal beings, for example, which are communicated through oral traditions of myths and folklore, serve to grace, sanctify, explain, and interpret each detail of the land.

Native Americans experience every being of nature and particular form of the land as being infused with many different spirit beings— ancestors, guides, totem animals—whose individual and collective presence sanctify and give meaning to the land in all its details and contours. Sites, stones formations, buttes, and animal behavior in a particular area may be important and sacred. Thus, it also gives meaning to the lives of people who can’t conceive of themselves apart from the land.

Such affirmation and experience of sacred time and sacred place free people from everyday appearances so they can be thrust into a deeper and more profound sense of the sacred dwelling beneath. The teepee or longhouse—like the temple or the cathedral of antiquity—determines the perimeters of space in such a way that a sacred place, or enclosure, is established. Space so defined serves as a model of the world, of the universe, or, microcosmically, of a human being.

The sacred cottonwood tree at the center of (and branching out above) the Plains sun dance lodge is its central axis. It symbolizes the way of liberation from the limits of the cosmos. Vertical ascent is impossible unless the starting point is the ritual center.

Relationships

Relationships between members of family, clan, or tribal groups are defined and intensified through relational or generational terms, rather than through personal names, which are considered to be sacred, and thus private, to the individual. This sense of relationship extends outward to include all beings of the specific environment, the elements, and the wind—whether these beings or powers are animate or inanimate.